


A Girl of the Social Round

by Justice_Turtle (Curuchamion)



Category: A Girl of the Limberlost - Gene Stratton-Porter
Genre: "women's work" is not lesser, Alternate Character Interpretation, F/M, I just got so mad, Misses Clause Challenge, Philip Ammon is a dick, Unpopular Female Character Being Awesome, Women Being Awesome, being pretty is not shameful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curuchamion/pseuds/Justice_Turtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PHILIP AMMON IS A DICK *koff* I mean: An apologia for Edith Carr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Girl of the Social Round

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophia_sol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophia_sol/gifts).



> When I re-read the book to try and write this story, I just got SO MAD on Edith's behalf. She's shamed by everybody including the author for being (in the author's eyes) this silly airheaded selfish overbearing horrible person who *quelle horreur* _doesn't like science!!!!!1!!omg!!!eleventy!_ and prefers *shock* TRADITIONALLY FEMALE UPPER-CLASS PURSUITS *gasp!*, but SHE DOES NOTHING WRONG! At all! Philip Ammon is a dick to her from beginning to end of the book; he's emotionally running around on her with Elnora, and would do so physically if Elnora and Mrs Comstock didn't both shut him down right quick. He badmouths her to people he barely knows. He... well! I'll be rewriting the fic in this space if I don't watch out. :D
> 
> I haven't gone past where I stopped this story because honestly I can't forgive Hart for being just as judgy at Edith as the rest of the cast AND THE AUTHOR. So I can't ship them like the book does; I just get TOO MAD and I can't write it as an AU where Hart actually realizes PHILIP AMMON IS A DICK and takes Edith's side, because it turns into even more soapboxing than this is, which is A LOT. Maybe another year. ;-)

Edith Carr is the best there is at what she does.

She's not interested in scientific research, in mathematics or the outdoor world - because who has ever tried to open her mind to them? Those things are reserved for men, and she does not intrude. Edith knows to a T, to a jot, to the balance of a hair, the rules that govern the life into which she was born... and she follows them. Magnificently.

She is perfect for the task. Tall and beautiful, dark-haired and violet-eyed, she was born to be the queen of a romance tale: all men will fall before her, and one will become her husband. This is her duty and her honor.

So Edith puts all her energy and attention, from the time she understands what is expected of her, into society life. She knows her oyster-forks and Chantilly lace; she keeps track of the latest fashions with such meticulousness and follows them with such flair that she becomes a trendsetter, able to wear a gown clearly designed after a moth - even to its having wings - outside of a masquerade ball and not become instantly ridiculous. She is in every way fitted to be the mistress of a great house in the uppermost echelons of society; she will be the most elegant, most desirable, most formal trophy wife a man could have, and she knows it.

When she and Philip Ammon are quite young, still in their 'teens, they form "an understanding" together. Philip is handsome, charming, delightful, and has great prospects; Edith is beautiful, and as she has been taught, just a little bit fickle. The best and only way, as she knows, to cement an alliance with a man of her own level - who should understand the elaborate mating dance of their social strata just as well as does she - is to trail men behind her, wind them around her little finger, and in all matters ensure that they know their place. She has no power if she steps into in their gross, material world; only so long as a man worships her for his love-goddess does she own his heart, and only in her own sphere does she control him with her carefully unplanned wiles.

So she is perfect. She is perfect as she understands perfection: always the most beautiful, the most entrancing. She is loyal to Philip, but never is he entirely sure of her. She must keep his interest - even after they are married, if she can - and therefore he must never, ever take her for granted. As soon as she becomes "the little woman at home" she will be lost. This, Edith Carr knows.

******

Hart Henderson is one of Edith's many followers; only that, at first. But he's persistent. He's dedicated. He cares about Edith not only for her beauty, which could hide any interior, nor for her stylishness, which many women could ape or surpass, had they the time and the riches. In flirting with Edith he learns to know her, and when he realizes she is faithful to Philip he doesn't drift away to follow some other brilliant lodestar. He keeps flirting with her, says he loves her - as all men do - but he also listens to her, even when she's not being the dazzling belle of the social whirl, and his ability to listen quietly draws her out. She talks to him, honestly, as plainly as a woman can to a man, keeping back only the secrets Philip shares with her... and somewhere in the course of their long conversations, he becomes her friend. This is new to Edith; society doesn't allow her to have many friends who are not also rivals, and she enjoys it. She enjoys having someone, especially a man (especially Hart), understand her.

Philip doesn't understand her. He doesn't share things with her, as she does not with him. That is not the form of their relationship. So from the first moment she reads his letter that Elnora dictated, with the poetical description of "R.B. Grosbeak" the neighbor gentleman, she knows absolutely that Philip never wrote that - it is not at all in his style, nor is it like anything he's ever said to her before. It's too casual and joking. Someone else's words are in Philip's letter to her, his private letter! Not only that, they're words Edith only just understands enough to feel that she's being mocked for not understanding them... that Philip and this "friend" of his are sharing a private joke at her expense.

So Edith promptly writes back to say, in words as clear as she can use when she knows that other unknown person may be reading them, that if Philip wants to settle down in the country with another woman's words on his tongue (she knows it is a woman by the style and by her instant flash of jealousy when she reads the letter, for the instincts of jealous love are the instincts of survival in Edith's circle, and Edith is the best)... if he wants to do that, he had better look for another woman than Edith. Preferably the one with whom he's currently philandering.

But he comes back after he realizes he's been jilted, and he pleads very prettily, and Edith takes him back. Twice, in fact, she does so. Because... because he is handsome and rich, and he wants her, and because they have an understanding. And, in essence, because she remembers the advice of her (very elderly, very direct) great-aunt: _"It doesn't matter where he boils the water, dear, as long as he always comes home to make the tea."_ She can put up with a little harmless wandering off, as long as it does remain harmless: as long as she's sure that she is first in his thoughts, if not his affections, while he is with her, and as long as he does nothing to destroy her social reputation while he's away. As long as he does nothing to reveal in public, to her own social circle, that she has failed to hold him entranced.

When he runs after Elnora's butterfly, when he tells an entire ballroom to catch the creature her own dress is so obviously based on and then doesn't bring it to her in tribute; when he doesn't even apologize before leaving her, at the climax of their engagement ball, in order to further another woman's interests...

...then Edith is angry, and justifiably so. Philip may not understand - he may not have wished to hurt her - but he has hurt her. And he insists, laughing, _laughing_ , that she is being unreasonable; that there was nothing more to his actions than cutting her out of a few minutes of dancing, as if all dancing was the same, as if that particular dance wasn't the start of their official life together as a society couple. He says she should have danced with Hart instead! Hart, whose advances she's rebuffed a million times, all in the name of loyalty to Philip.

Very well, then! Edith snatches the ruby engagement ring from her finger. If Philip considers their relationship, their status in the eyes of their peers, their _love_ this unimportant - she won't hold him back from the woman he truly loves. He can't jilt her, as a gentleman, but she can jilt him, and this time he swears (Hart, who knows him best, swears) he will stay jilted. Very well. Let him stay so.


End file.
